Friday, January 22, 2010

Superman is such a super guy, it would have to be wonderful to be married to him, right? Well, maybe not:

"Is it a big diamond? Did you crush some coal and make me a giant diamond? - Maybe you made us a planet?..."Honeymoon OVER!

Lois and Clark head to the orphanage where Clark has been cruelly interring Kara ever since she arrived on Earth. They apply for adoption immediately and everything looks good, but wait, apparently in the early 1960's, the ideas of motherhood and a career don't mix:Okay, that kid is just about ready for college. You're telling me, Lois can't write about fashion shows and inane inventions and Museums of Superstition and what Superman did today while her daughter is at school?

Anyway, Lois sacrifices her career to make Superman happy. And all he does is run off with their daughter all the time and save the world, leaving Lois with the housework. Except Superman vacuums the rugs by inhaling with his super-breath (YUCK!!) and Supergirl, volunteers to do the dishes- with disastrous results:

That snoopy broad in the window who looks suspiciously like Margaret Hamilton as Elmira Gulch in TheWizard of OZ is Mrs. Clayton, the investigator from the orphanage. Mrs. Clayton gets the wrong idea immediately, assuming Lois is lounging around all day while Linda does all the housework. Actually, I guess it is kinda the right idea, but being super, it takes Linda and Clark seconds to clean up, leaving Lois home all day with no-one to talk to but Superman's boring-ass robots:

While Lois is bored to tears, Superman and Supergirl get to go do fun things like this:This would NEVER work! See my previous rant.

Meanwhile, Lois continues to try to play the role of homemaker. Having wrenched her back, she orders the Linda Lee robot to make the beds. Lois notices that the robot is not performing efficiently and soon spots a loose bolt, which she tries to bang into place with a hairbrush. Women! I don't know how many times I've caught my wife using any convenient, heavy object (no matter how precious) as a hammer, or using a butter knife instead of one of our 15 screwdrivers! The right tool for the right job, ladies. Wait, where was I?:

So, Lois gets caught beating her daughter by that busybody, Mrs. Clayton. Linda is taken away without the benefit of police involvement or a hearing or anything.

But, at least Lois is still married to Superman. I mean, a guy like that, he's got to be super-understanding, right?

Wrong! As per usual, Superman shows his true colors as a selfish jerk.

12 comments:

Definitely a story where the contrivances finally twist and snap the suspension of disbelief.

If they wanted to create a famly-home life for Kara, it wouldn't require jumping thru the hoops of adoption. "Linda Lee" is barely more than a Halloween costume for Kara. Certainly ranks below "Supergirl" for fun and playing dressup.

Linda Lee runs away from the orphanage and is never seen again. Possibly a post card or two to Mrs. Clayton & Co. to alleviate worry and fuss.

"Oh, look dear. It's my long lost cousin Kara Kent." "She can stay as long as she likes!"

Ha!Excellent expose' of a tawdry, twisted little comic! Like Jacque said about that cover, they are really, really close cousins, aren't they?Definitely creepy.

Superman flying into the basement with Supergirl, to Lois:"I'm going down on...with...going down with Supergirl, a gorgeous young underage female from my own planet, into the basement to...play ping pong. That's it. Super-ping pong. So if you hear anything, it's just...ping pong. And of course I have to lock the door so ...so...so no small animals or little kids fall into the basement and hurt themselves, yeah. You stay up here and keep cleaning the house. The adoption people will be here later and this place looks like a sty! Oh, and you burned that meatloaf last night! Don't ruin dinner tonight too!"

No--I was referring to the one a couple of pics above that where the robots are sitting awkwardly on the couch while the Clark Kent robot is trying to arouse Lois with his tales of ribaldry. Looks like the obligatory "lead in" dialogue to some bad 70's pr0n.

But yeah, that other panel is hot too. Did he ever do any work with Dr. William Moulton Marston, 'cause if so, I gotta pick that up. And my own Silver Age journey begins...

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Otto Binder who wrote this story and created much of the DC mythology such as Supergirl and Mary Marvel loved robots and has another story where Lois gets spanked by a Superman robot she doesn't know was actually being controlled by Superman with his X-ray vision. His daughter Mary Binder who was killed in a car accident at 15 in 1967 was probably the imagined fan base of his Freudian subtext laden Lois Lane and Supergirl stories so let's not read too much into this. There was a time before internet fan fiction pornography when a man putting his arm around somebody wasn't inevitably a prelude to having naked sex orgies with them, most marriages didn't end in divorces with ugly custody battles, and the global AIDS epidemic didn't exist. It was a more innocent and in some ways much less neurotic age than we now live in.

Why The Silver Age?

I grew up in the late 70's and early 80's, right as superhero comics were going from a floundering social rant about human rights to a newly reinvented vision of your favorite heroes as masked psychopaths. Fortunately for me, my local library had a copy of "Batman from the 30's to the 70's" which I checked out and read regularly. I was hooked. I was filled with what Alan Moore would later call a "sense of wonder" at the elaborate interior of the Batcave. The supporting cast with room for a Batgirl, Batwoman, Bathound and Bat-Mite. Oh, sure, I joined the 1985 bandwagon of "Dark Knight Returns" and "Watchmen" style grittiness... but after a few years of that stuff, I began to miss, sincerely, characters like Streaky the Super-cat and Mr. Mxyzptlk. In a few more years, I began to really miss Aquaman's shirt (oh, and his hand). No, for me, superheroes will always exist in a shimmering land written before 1967.

Oh! And the images, indicia, titles, names. etc. of any comics or cartoon properties are copyright their respective owners.